IMF mission here talks economy, development – Caddle

A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is here on a one-week mission to hold talks on several economic and development-related matters, Minister in the Ministry of Economic Affairs Marsha Caddle told the House of Assembly on Tuesday.

“In those conversations we have with the Fund . . . we talk about every single issue that affects the development of this country, because while we have a responsibility to give people access to basic goods and services, we also have a responsibility to contribute to a thriving economy which can also then provide decent work for those same people,” Caddle told her colleagues.

“There are those who would like to suggest that it was a zero-sum game. It is not. All of these things need to be done. We need a balance of responsible, inclusive investment which is where our credit unions come in and all these instruments come in, and we need to generate the growth and prosperity that would allow us to provide to people.”

Barbados is currently in a four-year IMF-funded programme, which started in October 2018.

The last review of that Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme was done virtually in May at the request of Government.

Following that one-week meeting, an agreement was reached on the completion of the fifth review under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement and Barbados subsequently received an injection of US$24 million (BDS$48 million) from the IMF in June.

This brought the total disbursement since the start of the programme to around $830 million. (MM)